“When a kid watches the animated movie Shrek, he probably doesn’t know about Carl Jung’s theories of psychological types and the collective unconscious, but he is ingesting them nonetheless through those characters and that story adapted after the Jungian model . . . The screenwriters admit Shrek’s Jungian ideas: ‘The book is very clever, because …
The History of the Church Is the Center of World History
“In the providence of God, the kingdom of God was preached in the Greco-Roman world, and Christianity spread, for the most part, north and west. The direction of this movement has changed recently but only in the last century or so. Now the kingdom of God is not to be identified with Western culture, but …
Stories As Preachers
“Movies are finally, centrally, crucially, primarily, only about story. And those stories are finally, centrally, crucially, primarily, mostly about redemption.” (Brian Godawa, Hollywood Worldviews, p. 54).
Keeping An Edge On Our Kitchen Knives
“At this point, all Christian educators must know that clear thinking is a moral issue. Blurry thinking is one of the great sins of the age. To teach the dialectical stage without a constant grounding in the ethical absolutes of Scripture is worse than folly. Learning to distinguish rightly, learning to evaluate, is the meaning …
There Are Slugs On the Bottom of the Salad Too
“Two of the most frustrating replies to hear when asking people what they thought of a movie are ‘I liked it’ or ‘I didn’t like it,’ accompanied by an inability to explain why . . . We have already established that stories do not exist in a vacuum of meaninglessness. Movies communicate prevailing myths and …
Canaries and the Canadian Moose
“At the same time, we are not required to believe the opposite of whatever any unbeliever discovers. Through common grace, many unbelievers have noticed that the sky is blue and that canaries are yellow. This is fine, and faithfulness does not require any hot denials from us. However, the fact that unbelievers think that the …
No Neutrality On the Screen
“Every story is informed by a worldview. And so every movie, being a dramatic story, is also informed by a worldview. There is no such thing as a neutral story in which events and characters are presented objectively apart from interpretation” (Brian Godawa, Hollywood Worldviews, p. 25).
Dullardry, That”s It
“Polish without substance is sophistry. Substance without polish is . . . well, actually we don’t know what it is because nobody pays attention to it” (The Case for Classical Christian Education, p. 133).
Why Ad Rates for Super Bowl Halftime Should Be Inexpensive
[Michael Medved] “points out the hypocrisy of those in the dream business who proclaim that movies don’t influence belief or behavior while charging millions of dollars for advertising and product placements in movies and receiving awards and prestige for promoting trendy social agendas.” (Brian Godawa, Hollywood Worldviews, p. 17).
The Magical Comeback
“The American church has a relatively short history of assuming that true Christianity disappeared when the last apostle died and did not reappear until the camp meetings on the Kentucky frontier in 1799. Some, more moderate in their views, do not think the church disappeared until the third or fourth century, but it always seems …